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Suicide Group Secretly Aids Death of Woman Without Informing Loving Family

Two professional death "assistants" under murder investigation

By Elizabeth O'Brien

PHOENIX, August 24, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Two professional death "assistants" are under murder investigation for helping a mentally ill woman commit suicide without the knowledge of her close and loving family members, the Phoenix New Times reports.

Jana Van Voorhis, a 58-year-old Phoenix woman, was found by her sister Vicki Thomas and her husband Jared lying dead in bed in a townhouse. Because of Jana's mentally unstable condition, her sister expected to see pills lying about as the cause of her death. The couple was surprised, however, to find a neat and orderly scene that they said looked "staged."

Afterwards, evidence emerged that Jana had contacted a radical suicide group called Final Exit Network (FEN). The Times reports that FEN is an offshoot of the Hemlock Society, which was founded in 1980 by author Derek Humphrey.

Potential "clients" must contact the society and pay a $50 fee to become a member. The organization had sent in two "guides" to help her die of asphyxiation by breathing helium gas from under a face-mask. Helium is one of the preferred drugs used by suicide groups because traces of it are difficult to detect afterwards in the blood stream.

The two suicide "assistants" 79-year-old Wye Hale-Rowe, a retired family therapist and great-grandmother, and Frank Langsner, a retired college professor, were FEN volunteers.

According to the Times, Langsner recommended that Jana order helium tanks from a local party-supply store and order the special suicide hood. They also encouraged her with a "get-acquainted" visit. Hale-Rowe wrote in his records, "Jana seemed to need assurance a second and third time that the procedure would be painless and peaceful."

According to FEN policy, each applicant "must be mentally competent" before exit guides can help them commit suicide. The organization also claims it will not assist in a suicide "when family, friends or caregivers know about the patient's plans and are strongly opposed." Nevertheless, no one contacted Jana's close family, who stated that they would have done everything to prevent the tragedy.

"She had no relationship with her family," Langsner defended himself. "She had nothing to do with her sister and she had a brother in Seattle. She was all alone. She didn't even bother with her neighbors . . . This was a person who wanted to die."

Langsner also allegedly said, "You help get them in a frame of mind that they want to do it." His lawyer denies, however, that this comment was ever made.

Viki Thomas emphasized that she would have prevented her sister's death if she had known ahead of time. "My sister had problems from early on, but her family loved her, and she knew it," she said. "For anyone to say otherwise is just wrong. I can't imagine how Jana felt in her head. But we think that if these people (FEN) hadn't come into her life, she wouldn't have done what she did."

Under the present Arizona law, assisted suicide is explicitly illegal, but the meaning of "aiding" another person's death, as in the present case, could be argued in a legal court to mean something different from the original ordinances of the law.

In Arizona, suicide bills are routinely introduced into the state legislature. This January, for example, a bill was put forward that would have allowed terminally ill patients to commit assisted suicide. Patients who have less than six months to live would hasten their own deaths by administering a fatal drug dose. Like other bills in the past, however, the proposal never made it through committee discussions. 

Related LifeSiteNews coverage:

Bill Would Authorize Assisted Suicide By Any Other Name in Arizona
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/jan/07011706.html

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